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Getting Inside Einstein's Head
su-geek writes "'The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible,' Albert Einstein once remarked. Today many scientific documents and personal papers detailing the thoughts and emotions of our favorite physicist will be available at 3PM EST you can access the Einstein Archives Online.
Also, Wired is running an article"
Stop by the Albert Einstein Memorial Statue and sit in his lap!
Geez, I thought this would be a story about Einstein's brain
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I made a beeline for The Stafford Lectures, a series of lectures he gave at Princeton in 1921- which were later collected, translated, and published under the title "The Meaning of Relativity," a copy of which I happen to have. It was fascinating to look at the original notes that eventually would become the text of a book I own. It was even more fascinating that the equations were now the most comprehensible part of the text, as I don't understand much German (pitifully little considering my heritage), and even if I did, Einstein wrote his notes in a messy cursive scrawl with many scratch-outs and replaced passages. Still, it's a very interesting glimpse into Einstein's thought processes.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible," Albert Einstein once remarked.
Perhaps the world is indeed comprehensible to a genius like Einstein. And -- with the launch of a new website on Monday -- at least Einstein himself will be a bit more comprehensible to the world.
In addition to the voluminous collection of Einstein's writings, some never before published and none previously available online, the website will house an extensive database of 40,000 documents, images and research on Einstein's life and work, as well as digitized copies of Einstein's professional and personal correspondence and pages from his notebooks and travel diaries.
The site will include documents refuting popular beliefs about Einstein. He was not a bad student -- the only subject he flunked was French. He didn't work for the U.S. government on top-secret projects like the atom bomb; instead, he was for many years monitored by the FBI as a possible threat to national security. And he was, as his personal letters prove, an unrepentant flirt.
The new website, which goes live Monday at 3 p.m. EST, is the result of a year-long cooperative effort between the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology.
"It is a beautiful collaboration between two continents," said Diana Kormos Buchwald, director and general editor of the Einstein Papers Project. "We hope it will serve both the general public and researchers equally well."
The site was launched to compliment the day-long symposium on Einstein's life and work being held Monday at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
At the symposium, among other subjects, researchers will discuss 2,000 unpublished pages of calculations recently found in Einstein's files. Kormos Buchwald said the calculations are connected with Einstein's pursuit of a Grand Unified Theory.
Einstein firmly believed he would be able to describe every single law of physics through one simple mathematical equation. Although he devoted 35 years to his quest for the Unified Theory, it's believed he failed to discover that magic calculation.
But Kormos Buchwald said the 2,000 pages of notes, seemingly written shortly before Einstein's death in 1955, have yet to be fully explored.
"We have a lot of wonderful research to do yet, a lot of work ahead of us," Kormos Buchwald said. The calculations eventually will be posted on the website. The Einstein Papers Project plans to publish more than 14,000 Einstein-related documents in a 25-volume series called, aptly enough, "The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein."
The eight volumes that are available so far contain Einstein's writings and correspondence from his youth to age 40. They include his major papers on the theory of special relativity, general relativity, the quantum theory of light and matter, as well as a wealth of lesser-known contributions on many aspects of science, education, international reconciliation, Zionism and pacifism.
The website will present records for all items that have been edited and annotated by scholars, and those that have appeared in "The Collected Papers."
Approximately 500 previously unpublished documents, uncovered during the past 25 years from private collections and university archives, also will be available on the website.
Einstein Archives Online was developed in collaboration with the information technology and photo-reprography departments of Hebrew University's Jewish National and University Library, the library's David and Fela Shapell Digitization Project and the Princeton University Press.
Einstein's personal papers were bequeathed to Hebrew University in his last will and testament. The Albert Einstein Archives have been housed at the school since 1982, after being held at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, so U.S. scholars and scientists could review them.
From 1933 until 1955, the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiled a 2,000-page file on Albert Einstein, hoping to "destroy" his immense stature by linking him to Soviet espionage activities. At one point, not long before the scientist's death, a attempt was made to have him deported. This campaign is responsible in large part for Einstein's exclusion from the Manhattan Project, and is docemented in the book Fred Jerome's The Einstein File. Einstein's .
Actually, a better reference for handwriting analysis is right here
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Douglas Hofstadter's book "Gödel, Escher, Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid" has some HEAVY examination of (human and machine) consciousness. My favorite metaphor he uses for consciousness is an ant hill. The ant hill has many layers of emergent, recursive properties.
Indeed, and in fact Dennett and Hofstadter have worked together in some depth. Try The Mind's I co-authored by Hofstadter and Dennett for a fascinating series of essays on this very subject.
Sailing over the event horizon